new york city is a city of eight million people. but you have people coming from long island coming to the city every day, they come by road or by rail. that is the kind of work that needs to be done to get the city up and running again. i do rely on the testimony given previously and the testimony that is to come but i want to emphasize, the reason why these hearings matter because the rest of the congress, the rest of the senate hasn't been to new york since the storm. they haven't seen the devastation in these communities. they haven't seen the destruction that was caused to so many families and so many businesses. we've seen storms before, we've seen storms all across the country, we've seen wildfire, we've seen tornadoes, we've seen what happened with hurricane katrina. new york has never suffered on this level because of a natural disaster, ever. to have the ability to begin to rebuild will mean that we will rely on the federal government. so i want to thank you for holding this hearing and i want to thank you for giving us th